“Okay, remember how I said our situation is bad?” The scowling alien guy sitting next to me spoke up.
“Y-Yeah.”
“It’s actually worse than that.” He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, staring into the crowd of ships that all faced the same direction: directly into the wavering red sun that sat low on the horizon. “I was kinda hoping we’d at least be dropping into a hospitable climate, but this is Thermax. And we’re about thirty minutes out from sunrise.”
“Sunrise? But the sun’s already—”
“A sun,” he corrected. “Alzumaris is a quaternary system, human. Meaning it has four stars. And we just dropped on one of the planets that gets exposure to all of them at the same time. This is a balmy night on Thermax.”
My brain scrambled, struggling to make sense of that. A four-star system? How was that even possible? And what did it mean for us?
“We’re about to get hit by daylight, meaning for the next few hours, it’s going to be hot. Really hot. Hot enough to cook us alive in here because we don’t have the right shields to adequately deflect and distribute the heat. At sunrise, this ship becomes a glorified kiln.”
Oh my god.
I couldn’t help it; I looked over at him with tears welling in my eyes. It was one thing to get shot or die in a crash with another ship. That seemed like a fast, relatively easy way to go. But burning alive? I couldn’t … We couldn’t … There had to be some way to—
“The only upside is that, depending on our orbital position, we might only have to deal with the force of all four suns for a short amount of time. A few hours or so, maybe. Granted, that’s still enough to cook us, just not as fast.” He paused, pursing his lips thoughtfully before he flicked me a quick, sideways glance. Our gazes locked. My heartbeat skipped. It was so fast, so subtle, I nearly missed it. But that look in his big, catlike eyes almost seemed like he might have an idea.
The sudden collective roar of runner craft engines pulsed in the air so loudly, my eardrums burned and my teeth rattled. My spine stiffened as I sat watching in mute terror. Before us, a pair of enormous, obelisk-shaped ships descended to touch ground before the hoard of renegade racers. Roughly half a mile apart, they struck the surface with a thunderous BOOM that shook the ground and made my pulse stammer. A beam of sizzling blue light shot out between them like a crackling, glowing ribbon.
The starting line.
All around us, the other runner ships keyed up their engines and revved, so close I could see the silhouettes of their pilots—drivers—whatever they called themselves moving in the cockpits through the heavily tinted windows.
My alien partner snapped his hands forward and grabbed the W-shaped steering wheel again. His broad chest heaved with every slow, ragged breath that hissed through his clenched teeth. His brow knitted and shone with sweat.
As the engines thundered and our tiny craft shook, I could have sworn I heard him mutter, “Dammit all. Screw you, Rout. I am not dying like this.”
Without warning, the resounding blare of a horn sounded above the ambient bellow of the engines. The noise echoed through my chest, seeming to pierce through every part of me. I could feel it all the way down to my bones. Then the blue strip of light spanning the distance between the two pillar-shaped ships flashed and changed color. It strobed three times. And on the fourth time …
RED.
RED.
RED.
BLUE.
In the blink of an eye, it was total chaos.
10
HANGTIME
My alien companion slammed the steering wheel forward.
Our engines coughed and barked like two sick old dogs before they boomed into action. My head cracked off the seat behind me as we surged forward. The rush and blast of wind off hundreds of other engines threw up red dust like a sandstorm, blotting out everything except the occasional flash of metal from another ship as it glanced by and tongues of light from strange alien gunfire.
Another runner craft blurred past, appearing from the churning dust and missing us by inches. There wasn’t even time to scream.
An explosion on the left made our whole ship jolt and lurch as flames belched into the air. Shrapnel pinged off our hull and windshield.
More gunfire.
More flames.
Explosions rocked our ship and sent up sprays of rock and debris.
Straight ahead, a burst of wind or thrust cleared the dust just in time to see a pair of runner crafts collide head-on. They exploded on impact, sending out shards of metal and flashes of fire in every direction.
Oh my god, we were going to—
My alien partner yelled out a string of curses, snatching one of the handles on the console between us and yanking it back full-force. Our ship launched upward, flattening me against the seat again as we skimmed the wreck in a graceful leaping arc. We landed on the other side with a THUD, scraping our hull against the rocky ground. Skidding, bumping, and sliding, our ship’s rear fishtailed until he cranked on that handle again.
Our craft launched forward with another coughing sputter and he let out a whooping yell, giving the ceiling directly above him a victory punch that left a dent in the metal.
Yikes. Good thing he didn’t want a high-five. He might break my wrist.
But this was a good sign, right? We weren’t dead yet. Maybe we stood a chance.
I dared to hope. I couldn’t help it.
We broke out through the swirling red dust and sprays of sparks and bits of metal. But the cloud was thinning. The other runner crafts were leaving us behind—and hopefully taking the fight with them.
We could do this. We could make it. We might even be able to—
Something slammed into us from the right.
I didn’t even have time to cry out. The air filled with heat and
